What Kind of Coffee are you?
On the contradictory nature of Human Identity
Trigger Warning: Burnout and Family Issues
I wanna be where the people are
I wanna see
Wanna see ’em dancing
- Part of Your World (The Little Mermaid)
The human need to know and be a part of a group is ingrained in our very existence. From the mundane Buzzfeed articles correlating whatever characteristic to an even vaguer label (seriously, am I iced or hot coffee?) to the more complex features of identity, we want to know and be part of a group. Our ancestors, fighting against the behemoth that is Mother Nature, formed tribes to belong and find shelter in. Tribes turned to cities, cities turned to states and before we know it a nation is born. Our identities and labels, ground in the same way that they restrict. Our worldviews are formed primarily on the family we have, the friends we keep and the people that we meet. That’s why, despite the stupidity of it all we love to seek out a community of our own, a family. Ravenclaws, Geminis, Hamilton trash: these are the families we find shelter in.
Do you wonder why we still burn hours, upon hours taking quizzes (I’m iced coffee by the way) ascribing our behavior to inanimate objects? Why, despite our need to break free from the labels society set upon us, we seek to find our own?
‘Zuko, you have to look within yourself to save yourself from your other self. Only then will your true self reveal itself.’ Ugh, even when I’m talking for him I can’t figure out what he means.
- Zuko, Avatar the Last Airbender (2008)
This need to trace back and find my identity is nothing new to me. Like any bored teenager with an internet connection I took them all: Astrology, MBTI, Archetypes, and one boring afternoon BDSM tests with the whole class. The fact that my friends are pseudo-psychologists in their own right didn’t help either.
Test upon Test I took, yet even then the question at the very core of my being remains: Who am I? What is my identity?
I come from a family with multiple cultural backgrounds. At the age of 7, I had to leave all that I knew from Quezon City and go to my grandparents’ house in sleepy Palo, Leyte. Weirdly enough, this was the topic of my ACET essay a year ago. Brofenbrenner talked about the power that the communities and the ever-expanding interconnected circles we call society have on our growth as individuals. In other words, the environment we surround ourselves with, whether we like it or not, interacts with our innate characteristics thus creating change.
This is an all too brutal reality for someone who was forcibly extracted from communities I call home so many times I now have a hard time labeling myself. I was not born into the Waray-Waray context, I have a hard time considering myself part of a culture when I only started speaking the language in the eighth grade. I may identify closer to my Waray-Waray heritage due to proximity yet I am all too aware of the differences between the native and the implant. Despite living there for ten years, my grasp on the language is conversational at best.
Yet at the same time, I can no longer consider myself Tagalog. The half of my life I spent away from this city has lead me to lose familiarity with the cultural background of this behemoth that is the Metro. Streets that I used to play in no longer ring a bell. The only place I can navigate from memory is the old basement of SM North Edsa. The Neighborhood Lola I hold closer to my heart even more than my biological one knew passed away of cancer. The Bakawan our street is named after has long been turned to lumber.
Worse still, I transferred from a school run by the Claretians to a Baptist one. Imagine going from reciting the Angelus every 12 noon to Pledging Allegiance to the Christian Flag? From Sunday Mass with priests to Sunday Sermons? The adjustment was patchy with a Different Language,a Different Culture, and all in all a Different Context. Children in those ages aren’t the nicest to the new weird kid who would rather hang out in the library rather than in the football pitch. Perhaps that’s why I developed an aversion for Religion (ironic is it not since I’m in THE ateneo). In a massive effort to escape, in the sixth grade I pushed to be transferred to Pisay EVC .
I have met so many people, been to so many places that at this moment if you ask me what my identity is, I might have a hard time answering you. My childhood was not the most stable one. Even now, I may not have a hard time building lasting connections with others, yet at the back of my mind a voice nags at me that this might be taken away by the most unknown circumstances. I could barely say where my hometown is because I feel a disconnect between them and myself. In other words, I felt like a Third Culture Kid in my own country. In the background, an ever more globalizing world I sometimes felt disconnected from.
Surprisingly enough, due to the circumstances I found myself in from a young age, I developed a dialogical view with myself as a child, albeit quite literally. As an auditory learner I tended to “talk” to myself, thinking loudly in order to solve situations. Alternatively, I have a tendency to write down my thoughts in thousand-word essays (like this one but more chaotic). Especially as an only child, I am my only means of catharsis in a family. That is no fault of theirs of course, they grew up in a different time where emotions are taboo.
Does anybody have a map?
Anybody maybe happen to know how the hell to do this?
I don’t know if you can tell
But this is me just pretending to know
- Does Anybody Have A Map? (Dear Evan Hansen)
My first brush with burnout was in the tenth grade. I felt like the world was much too heavy to bear. So, if you’re sensing a pattern, I searched what was I feeling in order to articulate the meaning behind my actions. A burnout test from Psychology Today eventually popped up: Moderate to High Risk of Burnout.
As any child wanted to do, I asked my parents. Yet, they too are unaware.
What was I supposed to do then? This was the rabbit hole and I was Alice diving deep into Anti-Wonderland. I already developed a fear of opening up due to my childhood bullying. Sticks and Stones may break your bones but repeated words get implanted into your subconscious.
Let’s develop an equation shall we? Let X be an individual in a high stress school. Let’s add A for lack of academic achievement, B for “Bola lang yan”, C for lack of emotional understanding in the family and D for Dedmahan when problems arise and what do we get? Honestly, at this point I’m wondering whether I’m a high functioning depressive or I’m just tired.
My first major breakdown was in the eleventh grade. Magically, my Filipino grade went from a 95 in the first quarter to a measly 60. Ironically, I did my absolute best to prevent the breakdown from the year prior. It got so bad that for the entirety of the Christmas break, I barely left my bed with a heaviness in my chest I can’t seem to fathom. Why am I like this? What is Happening? Once again, I asked my parents for answers yet they too are at a loss.
The year was 2016, I just experienced the highest grade of my Pisay stay the previous year: a 1.6 (around 85 in Ateneo standards), if I kept it up I might be reach the Director’s List! Life has a weird way of getting to you doesn’t it? The subjects I expected would be a walk in the park wasn’t as easy as I thought. Worse still, the situation in the family was just coming to a boil. My mother just came out of a surgery to remove her ovary and the toll it had on our family was ridiculous. Issues from years past started to be brought up.
My academics were slipping away. My orgwork was nonexistent. My family life was in shambles. It got so bad that my friends had to ambush me in my home to get me to talk. My parents you see, bless their heart, also kept reminding me that they’re the only ones I should talk to. Like a dam set to full, I burst that afternoon. Each episode merely increases your chances of having another one and by graduation I’m unsure how many I had.
I had my ups and downs, but I always find the inner strength to pull myself up. I was served lemons, but I made lemonade… . So we’re gonna heal. We’re gonna start again.
- Beyonce (Lemonade, 2016)
How am I coping? A question I am still unable to answer at the moment. Unconsciously? The tests, the constant examination of myself helped forge me to be more understanding and be more gentle with myself. It taught me to talk and be more mindful of my emotions, to allow it to flow. Yet most importantly I learned how to cope with it in a more positive way. Thousand-word essays, Spotify Playlists and most importantly to talk with others.
To lift from one of those essays I wrote a few months ago:
I hate to say this but I learned so much about myself and others in the process. Necessity is after all the mother of invention. I had to find and understand the meaning behind my own existence. I had to experience the full breadth of my abilities and my emotions without as much as a guiding compass. Yet in this raging ocean that is the universe I also found out that I had true friends behind me. There are people who are willing to help me out of my rut, to shake me from my bed stained with tears and go live my life.
I started this essay with a question: who am I and how did the context I live in affect me now? I am still unable to completely say who or what I am going to be. I expect this will be the question for the remaining time I have on this dying planet. I am all of this yet in the same time, none of it. I am as defined by my labels in as much as my labels are defined by me. Breakdowns and failures are inevitable. I just pray that I’m ready to handle the next one.
